Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, UPON THE REPORT OF TE KING OF SWEDEN'S DEATH, by THOMAS RANDOLPH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

UPON THE REPORT OF TE KING OF SWEDEN'S DEATH, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I'll not believe't; if fate should be so cross
Last Line: So great a loss, will choose not to believe.
Subject(s): Gustavus Ii Adolphus, King (1595-1632); Gustavus Ii Adolphus, King Of Sweden


I'LL not believe't; if fate should be so cross,
Nature would not be silent of her loss.
Can he be dead, and no portents appear,
No pale eclipse of the sun, to let us fear
What we should suffer, and before his light
Put out the world enveloped in night?
What thund'ring torrents the flush'd welkin tare,
What apparition kill'd him in the air!
When Caesar died, there were convulsion fits,
And Nature seem'd to run out of her wits.
At that sad object Tiber's bosom swell'd,
And scarce from drowning all by Jove withheld;
And shall we give this mighty conqueror,
That, in a great and a more holy war,
Was pulling down the empire which he rear'd,
A fall unmourn'd of Nature, and unfear'd?
A death (unless the league of heav'n withstood)
Less wept than with an universal flood?
If I had seen a comet in the air
With glorious eye and bright dishevell'd hair,
And on a sudden with his gilded train
Drop down, I should have said that Sweden's slain,
Shot like that star. Or if the earth had shook
Like a weak floor, the falling roof had broke,
I should have said, the mighty king is gone!
Fell'd as the tallest tree in Lebanon.
Alas! if he were dead, we need no post,
Very instinct would tell us what we lost.
And a chill damp (as at the general doom)
Creep through each breast, and we should know for whom,
His german conquests are not yet complete,
And when they are, there's more remaining yet.
The world is full of sin; not every land
O'ergrown with schism hath felt his purging hand.
The Pope is not confounded, and the Turk;
Nor was he, sure, design'd for a less work.
But if our sins have stopp'd him in the source,
In midst career of his victorious course;
And heaven would trust the dulness of our sense
So far, not to prepare us with portents,
'Tis we that have the loss, and he hath caught
His heav'nly garland ere his work be wrought.
But I, before I'll undertake to grieve
So great a loss, will choose not to believe.





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